


Yewenwell

by wednesdayisland



Category: The Matter of Britain
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2014-11-08
Packaged: 2018-02-24 13:52:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2583689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wednesdayisland/pseuds/wednesdayisland





	Yewenwell

_"There comes a time in a baby's life, just after birth, when it must learn to live in the new world and forget the ways of the old. And for a while it feels in between, neither of one nor the other."_

Ann was writing in her diary; it was an echo of the way she felt at that moment. The coach jolted around another corner, distracting her. She looked out of the window at the falling darkness and drizzle. Her mind relaxed a moment, then with a shake of her head she brought her thoughts back to the diary. What else was there to say about the past day? Mostly it had been a day of waiting in the rain for buses and dozing half-slouched on uncomfortable grey coach seats. Still, yesterday was barely covered as yet. She cast her mind back.

In its way, yesterday had been pretty normal. She had turned up at work at nine as normal, written code, read specifications, drunk coffee. It was only when she got the email inviting her coworkers to her leaving party that she was reminded that this day would be the last she'd spend in this routine. It had been much like the gatherings she'd been to before when others of her coworkers had grown tired of the company-- the small knot of people gathered around the table with the soft drinks, the boring speech by the Chief Technology Officer about how much they'd miss her and what an asset she'd been to the company, despite the currently advanced stage of hiring her replacement. Then it was time for her own speech, a few platitudes strung haltingly together which picked up a smattering of polite applause. Finally, here was the relieved dive for the orange juice. It was at this point that Alice had approached her.

"So you're leaving us."

Ann nodded, unsure of whether to take this as a question or statement. "I'm off to... well, follow my dreams, I suppose," she said, aware that her voice was tailing off rather lamely.

"Your dreams? What are your plans? I heard you were writing a novel," Alice persisted.

"That's right," said Ann. "Not that I didn't enjoy my time here," she added. Though not her immediate superior, Alice was rather higher in the company's organisation than Ann. Somehow the need to be polite to the managers persisted, even on her leaving day. "It's a few ideas I've been kicking around for a couple of years now. I'm been working on it at nights these last few months, and with my savings over the time I've worked here I figure I can give up six months or so to write full-time."

Alice nodded and took a gulp of her orange juice. There was clearly something more on her mind. "Tell me about the novel. If you're not worried I'll steal your ideas, of course.'

Ann smiled politely. "It's fantasy, I suppose you'd call it, but it's based on some historical characters. The protagonist is a guy named Fabian Stedman, who in real life was a Cambridge printer. The story is that certain magical, or you might say, numerological, properties are attached to certain patterns in groups of numbers. Stedman was interested in set permutations in real life, we know, and this builds on that to suggest a magical background for his work. Fictional, of course, but often the great mathematicians of the past had a numerological bent. Look at Newton." She sipped at her own drink, "Not too much information in one go there?"

"Oh, no no," said Alice. "I heard you were visiting Yewenwell?"

Something in the abruptness of her speech startled Ann, but only for a moment. "Yeah, they have a big collection of Stedman's papers. I'll be renting a room there while I check them out-- it'll be a good way to get some peace and quiet, besides. Why, do you know Yewenwell?"

"I'm acquainted with it. Never been there myself, but I'm acquainted with it. When you get there," and her eyes met Ann's, then looked away, "send me a postcard, won't you?"

"I'll be sure to remember," said Ann.

"And if you meet a guy called Peter Wendover, remember me to him. Now... I have to thank you for the work you've put in over the past few years on the projects I've been involved with. Especially the Minstrel project. Thank you."

"It's no problem. It's my job... it _was_ ," said Ann.

"Thank you anyway. All the best in your new life. Enjoy Yewenwell!" and with that she was gone.

Ann wondered about this as she stared out of the bus's window, watching the dim day turn to dusk and then to night. With little else to do until she reached Yewenwell, she chewed it over piece by piece in her mind. Strange that Alice knew someone at Yewenwell-- actually, strange she knew Yewenwell at all: it was hardly the most famous library in the country. She wondered how Alice knew this Wendover person, and made a mental note to buy stationery or a postcard as soon as she was settled in, and write to discuss it with her.

The trees rolled by, forming a lullaby pattern in her mind, and it seemed no time at all before she realised the bus had stopped and the driver was calling, "Yewenwell! Yewenwell corner! Didn't someone want Yewenwell?" She shook the sleep from her head, reached up to get her hand-luggage (almost knocking her neighbour on the head in the process), apologised, made her way onto the steps and then had her feet on solid ground for the first time in three counties. So this was it. The driver helped her take the rest of her baggage out of the coach's hold, and then in a moment she was alone in the half-darkness. She shivered.

Apart from the road stretching out of sight in both directions, woods obscured the view. But leaving the road at a right-angle and curving off into the woodland was a simpler track, and somewhere in the rough direction of this track shone lights-- the lights of Yewenwell, she supposed. She shouldered her backpack and began the bleary walk towards the light.

She had not travelled more than a hundred yards when she saw the bobbing light of a torch carried by someone walking towards her. The lateness of the hour and the overhanging trees had by now made it too dark to make out more than a human shape behind it: tall, broad-shouldered. When the light had almost reached her, its bearer shone it around her, examining her, then brought it up to shine on his own face-- a sombre face, with long cheekbones and a close-cropped beard. "You must be Ann," said the face. "Pleased to meet you. I'm Terence, Terence Ornet."

"You're from Yewenwell, then?"

"That's right. Deputy librarian. Want a hand with those bags?" He put out a hand for her hand luggage, and Ann passed it to him. Terence flapped mildly at a moth which fluttered around his flashlight, then took the bag. He turned and began trudging back up the path. "I was sent to meet you. Did you have a good journey?"

"Pleasant enough, thanks," said Ann. "Uneventful."

"And you'll be with us for, what? Six weeks?"

"That's the plan. I'm looking forward to getting down to work-- and being around Yewenwell, too, to be honest. I'm intrigued by what I've heard, but I still don't feel I have a very coherent mental picture of the place."

"Mmm... we'll talk about it once you've found your room, though-- we're pretty much here now," said Terence. They were crossing a bridge of some kind over lapping water surrounded by shadowy trees standing upright like sentries. Large buildings reared up in the gloom before them, their lighted windows making constellations in the dusk. "Well, this is it."

"Is this a moat?" asked Ann.

"Mm, no, fishpond," Terence said, "from the old abbey. I'd show you around, but it's late already. But see: the Tower's ahead of you, then there's the New Building and the Cripps building to your left, and the stables to your right."

"For horses?"

"No, for you, tonight," said Terence, "amongst others. We use it as an overflow residential block. Don't worry, it's been well converted."

He led her through a thick side door into a lighted corridor, unlocked one of a row of identical doors while she still stood blinking, flipped the light on, walked in and laid her bag down on the bed. "This will be your room. Come in."

Ann walked through the door, turning an almost complete circle. The room was tiny: most of the space was taken by a single bed and a desk with a noticeboard above it. Bookshelves lined an alcove facing a wardrobe, and to her left a door hid a tiny shower-room. She dumped her backpack on the bed and looked around the shower room door.

"En suite," said Terence, "luckily for you. With most of the rooms in the old cloisters, you have to cross to the next building if you want a shower. You should count your blessings!"

Ann smiled, feeling suddenly at home. "I should. I will."

Terence handed her a sheaf of brightly-coloured photocopied papers. "These are your official introduction to the place. But if you want a less formal explanation, feel free to drop by my study later. You sound as though you'd like to know something of the history of the place." He fished a biro from his pocket and drew a map on the back of one of the sheets. "R12 is my room-- where I'm based, that is-- not where I sleep," he explained. "Drop in any time before eleven tonight, or otherwise I'm sure I'll see you tomorrow." And with that he left.

It was a shower and some quiet alone time later when Ann knocked on the door of R12. Terence's sketched map had led her through a great entrance hall filled with curving staircases and marble statues, up some side-stairs, through two dull-coloured corridors and finally to the room she sought. She knocked, and Terence opened.

The room was a small one, with a whiteboard, a table, and a few other doors leading from it. "Do sit down," Terence said, opening one of the cupboards that stood against the wall, and Ann sat. "I believe it's traditional to start the story with a map," he said, busying himself with searching through the cupboards that stood against the wall, "certainly, Tolkien and Lewis did it, but that's a tradition I'm going to have to break. I've been trying to sort out the shape of Yewenwell these past fifteen years. I mean, if I tried to draw you something, I could put this room at the centre of the page, or perhaps the Reading Room, but I wouldn't know how to join the two together, or where the rat-runs go, and I'd be sure to leave out the important parts, like where the coffee machine is..."

Ann settled back in her chair, content to listen. Terence's slow voice, now she had time to listen to it, was a voice you could bask in, a voice for listening to without needing to interrupt, the voice of a 'cello on a late-night radio programme. Terence plucked green and red pens from the cupboard, and came over to sit at the polished pine table that took up so much of the room.

"So I couldn't draw it, at least not geographically. I could perhaps draw it logically, like the designer of the tube map... whatever his name was... but it would be more like one of those diagrams of what's inside your head, the way you think about stuff..." Terence waved his hands gently as though he was attempting to conjure meaning from the air. "...Harry Beck, that was his name. Anyway, it would be how I think about Yewenwell, though you might find it useful... but I suppose you have to make your own map. And besides, if I can't start the story with the traditional map, I'm sure it's traditional to continue it with a cup of tea." Without more warning than this, he scurried through one of the other doors that left the room, and Ann was left alone.

Her eyes made a trip around the room: between its three doors, the walls were painted in a scuffed shade of green, that mould-colour that authority seems to love so much. A noticeboard hung on a nearby wall, covered with typewritten text, above a battered photocopier: from what she could see, it was a mix of memos to all, copied jokes and poems, and one message about a lost cat. From the ceiling hung the single, shaded lightbulb, and a great iron radiator ran the length of the far wall, seemingly doing little to warm the chilly air. The table at which she sat took up most of the room; it was clearly the sort of table that people used, wrote upon, sat around, sat upon, polished, re-polished and carved their initials into. Ann began to feel a little more at home.

Her spirits rose still further at that moment: Terence returned with a tray and two mugs of tea. "So," he said, putting the tray down, then passing her one mug... "you'd better hear some of the history of the place." Ann cupped her fingers around the heat of the mug and leaned back once more to listen in comfort.


End file.
